


Betrüger

by ocktorok



Series: Miles to Go [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Blood, Blood and Gore, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Suicide Attempt, Violence, baseball bat, he's got a mean swing, i dont wanna tag this with suicide attempt but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 16:29:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7446007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocktorok/pseuds/ocktorok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux couldn’t seem to warm up. Sweltering heat of Georgia be damned, there was a chill in his bones that would not give. He’d lost track of the days that had passed since he’d seen Kylo’s face. Heard his laugh, felt the static brush of his presence glide across his skin. He’d thought that with time it would get better. He was tired of being wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Betrüger

**Author's Note:**

> Kylo isn't even in this it's just sogo Hux doing sogo Hux stuff ft. some sweet, sweet backstory. Reading this one isn't necessary to read the others, all three of these stand alone well enough though they _are_ meant to go together. Part one and part two are happening at the same time and the third happens immediately after. Anyway I wrote this one as mostly stress relief don't mind me.

Hux couldn’t seem to warm up. Sweltering heat of Georgia be damned, there was a chill in his bones that would not give. He’d lost track of the days that had passed since he’d seen Kylo’s face. Heard his laugh, felt the static brush of his presence glide across his skin. He’d thought that with time it would get better. He was tired of being wrong.

At first it had only been a matter of keeping himself occupied. Not hard to do with a house as large as his. There was always something to clean, something to fix. When chores inevitably failed him, he set about to his work, filing and sorting papers. Stocking pens and useless supplies for his study.  If he was desperate enough and the right mood struck him, a fresh wave of draft papers were only a phone call away. 

In the end, nothing was enough.

He caught himself speaking aloud, asking Kylo how his day was and listening to the house grow quieter before he remembered. Sometimes he thought he saw him, just out of the corner of his eye, passing a doorway or lounging in the den. Further investigation proved his mind was beginning to fail him.

He berated himself endlessly, knowing Kylo would return as he always did. Always would.  _ He won’t not this time  _

Left alone with himself, there was no stopping the voice in his head that whispered to him. It occurred to Hux that usually these sorts of thoughts ended with ‘in the dead of night.’ To be perfectly frank he would have found that a blessing.  _  He doesn't need you He could have this with anyone _ Sun up, night fall, cloud coverage or heartbreaking rain - it was irrelevant to him, this voice that reminded him of his shortcomings. __

Hux had even named it. His father had suggested he do so.  _ Weak  _ You don’t fear what you know and what you know has a name.  _ Foolish _ If you can name it you can fight it.  _ Petty  _ Huxx. An uninventive name to be sure but Hux had been a child and in his child-mind he’d thought so integral a part of himself should share his designation. There was no fighting Huxx.  _ Human  _ There was no stopping Huxx  _ Not enough _  there was no point in trying.  _ He’s not coming back _ Trying is all Hux had ever done.  _ He doesn't love you  _

Huxx was there with him when he smarted off in class to the boorish children sitting behind him.  _ Not you you’re not good enough for him _ Huxx was there when those same boys followed him home and knocked his head on every tree along the way, breaking his nose in multiple places. _ You know it  _  Huxx was there when, that night, Hux reset his own nose and stole his fathers knife.  _ He knows it _ Huxx was there when Hux eased open their windows and stole into their rooms, one by one.  _ He's not coming back _ Huxx was there when Hux cut the ears off the children the town would never speak of again.  _ Stop looking for him in the corners _ Huxx was there when his father sent him to military school. Huxx had always been there.  _ he’s not there  _  Huxx always would be.  _ Heneverwillbeagainhesnotinthehousehe’snotinyourbedhe’snotinyourlifeyou’renotinhishearthisthoughtshis _ \--

Hux couldn’t remember climbing the stairs. He didn’t recall opening the door to his bedroom or crossing to the bath. He had no recollection of opening the medicine cabinet and retrieving his shaving kit. He simply blinked into consciousness when the sting of the razor slit into his throat, his neck opening with the wet pop of gristle. He looked into his own eyes in the vanity above the sink, watched as the blood - flowing too quick and painless from his esophagus - stained and blackened and shone down his snowdriven shirt. For a moment he was finally, blessedly, at peace. 

To his horror, Huxx had other plans

In the mirror he watched his own hand lift, though when he looked it lay unmoved at his side. In the mirror his olive eyes glinted with malice, embered waves of his hair falling around his shoulders and sopping at blood with a breeze Hux did not feel on his face.  In the mirror his unscarred hand brushed across scruff that Hux’s jaw did not bear, and grasped firmly at his neck to stem the flow. In the mirror, Huxx smiled.

Hux stumbled back, razor blade falling from his diced palm and clattering to the ground. Frantically he groped at his own neck, smearing bloodied hands over the unmarred skin of his adam's apple. Wild eyed and unseeing, Hux half fell out of the bathroom, lumbering to the stairs and tripping over his feet in his frenetic descent. Somewhere along the way he’d seized his baseball bat  _ not even yours your father bought it for you _ He scratched at the wood with his thumbnail as he busted out the front door.

Thickets of nettles snagged at his clothes as he fumbled through his yard, clearing the trees in a time he did not recall passing.  _ Your memory is unreliable he’s not coming back you’re not worth it _ . The granulated drag of the bat pulling through the dirt alongside him drowned out even the croak of the bull toads. He didn’t see the forest through the green of the leaves  _ he doesn’t see you _ the grooves the bat left in its wake swirled and looped in half circles, amplified sound buzzing unbearably in Hux’s ears _ he’s never said it  _ Hux lifted the bat, slapped it against his left palm once, twice and slid it over his shoulders, bracing his forearms against the wood.  _ You’ve never said it it’s not real to him you’re not _ He stepped from the path and overlooked the nightly lit town  _ you’ll never leave this town again you had your chance to be something be someone and you blew it you blew it all for money and what? Love? Did you think this was love? Pathetic. He’s perfect he’s everything to you and what’re you to him you’re nothing you’re a passing fancy he’s already forgotten you you’re worthless you’re a replicable experience  _

Hux kicked in the door of the first house he came upon, splintered wood shattering against the wall as Hux fell against it. It’s inhabitants looked up in surprise and then terror as Hux shifted the bat from round his shoulders, twirled it in his hand, and swung.

The bat cracked against the boy’s head, sending him careening face first into a broken radiator as his parents scrambled to his aide. Ignoring the fists of the mother beating into his back Hux caught the father in the chin with an upswing, knocking teeth into teeth and scattering them in porcelain fragments over the floor. Blood poured from between the man fingers when he instinctively grabbed his face. Adjusting his grip on the hilt Hux pulled back. Flexing his hold and drawing the muscles in his arm taught, he made quick work of collapsing the man's head, sick crunch of his skull not enough to stop Hux from further pulping his previously distinguishable visage. 

The boy stared on in concussed horror as Hux turned on the mother. She was so much easier to disperse; two sharp swings and she joined her husband. With a quirk of his lip Hux entertained the idea that not even death had parted them  _ death won’t part you either he’s already gone _ Turning swiftly Hux searched for and found the boy, pinned him to the floor with no more than the expression on his face. No older than seventeen, Hux found no sport with him and moved on.

He prowled between the houses, each breath dragged into his lungs. Hyperventilating and crawling with energy, his hands continuously flexed around the blood spattered bat. There was no rhyme or reason to his choosing, each door battered down and each family felled seen with distinct clarity behind the thickly tattered scratch of his inability to concentrate. With every swing of his bat, each knee socket ripped violently out of place, he relaxed. In turn, every insect that dared chirp and each bird that shrilled and warbled scuffed and chafed and churned in him an irritable wrath that would not subside. 

With restless puissance he flipped the bat in his hand, grasping it by the broad end and jabbing the sweat slick hilt into the adam's apple of a man whose face he  _ knew _ he knew but could not recognize  _ or maybe it’s that you don’t care maybe you never cared maybe thats why theres nothing in you worth caring about _ spittle flew from the man’s mouth as he choked, gagging as he gasped for air. Hux took the opportunity to drive the length of the bat into the soft swell of his stomach, knocking him to the floor and blindly striking down, heavy handed overhead arcs making his face a truly indiscernible puddle of viscera, the backspray of brain matter sticking to Hux’s face and catching thickly in his hair.

He wiped at it with vigor, breathing more labored than ever as he only managed to further coat his face in the disturbingly cool blood of the man he’d just killed. _Man?_ _Men? How many people when did he -_

Shaking his arms, fingers twitching and chest failing to expand enough to gather and hold the air he knew he needed to calm down  _ you can’t calm down you’ll never calm down he’s gone from you you’re worthless you’re unoriginal men like you are a dime a dozen you’re pathetic so easily replaced  _ Hux’s aggravated yell echoed around the enclosure  _ the home when did you go inside you’re losing it hux just give in _ as he swatted at the air by his head. 

Fury marred his face. His surroundings blurred, eyes lost focus. His head jerked back and forth in tiny errant twitches of paranoia. He knew the things crawling in his peripherals weren’t real. It didn’t stop him from checking. It never stopped him from checking. He was vaguely aware he was grinding his teeth. Wincing in hypersensitivity at the sound his rage was further inflamed when a blonde head caught his attention.

_ Speaking of people who never liked you look at her why would you ever think she ever did anything but tolerate you you know she laughs at you behind your _ Phasma turned at the sound of his approaching footsteps, raised a brow at the sight of his bat and then the other when Hux attempted to swing. She caught it in her hand with ease and twisted it from him, casting it behind her to roll harmlessly across the deck of her shop. With a firm grip she pulled Hux to her by the shoulders and leaned a little, getting right in his face and maintaining steady eye contact as she instructed him to “Be still. Breathe” and demonstrated with exaggerated heaves of her chest.

One slow roll of his shoulder after the other, Hux slipped back from her touch and matched her movements one deep inhale at a time. She didn’t stop until Hux felt lightheaded, a little dehydrated, and mostly sane.

Hux nodded when Phasma straightened and asked, “Better?” but she wasn’t so easily fooled. 

“You need to go home Hux. Get some sleep. You want me to come with you?”

Hux blinked. “Phasma I’ve just killed everyone.”

“Have you?” She looked pointedly behind him. “Then who are all these people?”

Hux furrowed his brow, never more uncertain than he was in that moment to see the townspeople moving around in their homes, alive and well. He examined his hands and found them to be bloodless.  _ But he’d - _

“You know how you get. You had a moment, that’s all.” She pushed at him with her fingertips. “If you sleep, I promise I’ll forget this happened.”

Hux scowled in the direction of the path. “You do this too often.”

“Well maybe that’s because I like you. Despite what happens up here,” she laughed, tapping at the back of his head. Then, more seriously, “I do like you Hux. You’re a proud pain in the ass who needs a reality check now and then, but I’m fond of you anyway. And so is he.” She came out from behind him, striding several feet before turning around and flashing Hux a brilliant smile. “Now come on. I can tell you’ll not go by yourself so let’s get to it.”

“Alright,” Hux stepped off the porch, “Lead the way.”

Perhaps Phasma was right.

A little sleep was all he needed.


End file.
